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Commentary | Attacks continue 43 years later

Forty-three years ago this week, the Supreme Court recognized that the Constitution protects a woman’s right to decide to have an abortion.

But since the Court decided Roe v. Wade in 1973, states have passed more than 1,000 restrictions that make it much harder for a woman who has decided to have an abortion to actually get one. While many of these restrictions mask themselves as being necessary for or beneficial to patient care, the real agenda of some politicians is to ban abortion outright. Since they can’t, they are using restrictive laws to put abortion out of reach. In 2015 alone, 57 new restrictions on abortion access were signed into law across the nation.

The ways these laws interfere with care are varied. Some require doctors to provide inaccurate or incomplete information to their patients. Others require a woman to view an ultrasound before she can have an abortion. Some even mandate which procedures for which private insurance can and cannot pay.

This week in Kentucky, the Senate passed SB 4, a measure that forces a woman to make medically unnecessary extra trips to the clinic before she can get an abortion, trips that cost time and money many Kentucky women don’t have.

Also on the Senate’s “priority bills” list this session is SB 7, legislation that would expand the definition of abortion services providers to include rape crisis centers, health departments, and family health clinics, simply because counselors at these entities provide comprehensive information about giving birth, adoption services and abortion to clients and patients seeking accurate family planning information. If signed into law, SB 7 would prevent these critical community institutions from receiving state funding, crippling health services for all Kentuckians.

Threats to reproductive freedom are also playing out on a national level. In March, the Supreme Court will hear Whole Woman’s Health V. Cole, one of the most important cases on abortion access in decades. The case challenges two laws that would force 75 percent of the clinics in Texas to shut their doors. Two laws that leading medical groups, like the American Medical Association and the American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists, say don’t protect women’s health. In fact, they put women at risk.

Boiled down to its simplest terms, the question before the Supreme Court is this: Is it OK to pass laws without any medical justification that make it incredibly difficult, if not impossible, for a woman to get an abortion? Because of the Supreme Court case, all eyes are on Texas - and they should be. But it would be a real mistake to think that what happens in Texas stays in Texas. The laws before the court were passed as part of a nationwide effort to make it as difficult as possible for a woman who has decided to have an abortion to actually get one.

Forty-three years after Roe, the attacks and threats to reproductive freedom are real and growing in number. We cannot know all the personal and medical circumstances behind a woman’s decision to have an abortion. Each person’s life and each person’s situation are different and we should respect that this decision is hers to make.

On this anniversary of Roe v. Wade the ACLU of Kentucky Reproductive Freedom Project calls on legislators to leave the decision where it belongs – between Kentucky’s women, their families and their doctors.

Derek Selznick is director of the Reproductive Freedom Project of the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky.